


the road is long, we carry on

by rebelsquad (wolveheart)



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mob, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Mentions of Violence, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 15:54:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4441949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolveheart/pseuds/rebelsquad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“There is no good ending for people like us, George.”<br/>George says what he always says and what always feels like a half-truth, like there could be more to it but it won’t come out of his mouth.<br/>“If the ending sucks we should make the story before as good as we can.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	the road is long, we carry on

**Author's Note:**

> fair warning: this is not as sickeningly fluffy as i prefer my AUs to be. but, and i'm laughing at myself here, it's not as angsty as i had initially thought it would be, so.
> 
> inspired by [this gorgeous photoset](http://wolfandwildling.tumblr.com/post/124941946340/luztoye-organized-crime-au-there-is-no-good) and my own tags

With half an ear George listens to the woman standing behind him in the queue complain to her friend on the phone about how fast time ticks by, how it’s already September and the shops are putting the Halloween decorations on display. He doesn’t interfere to point out that right now all she’s doing is waiting in line for a cup of coffee, that he can tell by the impeccable business suit and the perfectly manicured nails she knows nothing about time flying by.

Nothing compares to the blood rushing in your ears, ducking under searching headlights as your wide eyes try to take everything in, everything that flits across your line of sight because that’s how fast the world spins, so fast that you feel light on your feet from the momentum and the electricity of what feels like lightning coursing through every fibre of your body and you want to laugh and scream and run and -

George takes the two cups of coffee the barista with the bored expression holds out to him. He turns around and flashes the woman one of his brightest smiles. She doesn’t look and he doesn’t care enough, he has to watch out or he’ll bump against the bruise from last night that’s blooming on his ribcage and he can’t flinch with scalding hot coffee in his hands.

He doesn’t walk any faster than other people would. Doesn’t matter. In the end he’ll still get to the finish line before them, that’s how his world works.

Joe is waiting for him outside the coffee shop. For once, he doesn’t bitch about how long it took George to get their drinks, only takes his cup and smiles a thanks before they make their way through the city.

They walk closer than is necessary; every now and then their hands brush. George thinks of fast-beating hearts and jolts of electricity, and finds that during those fleeting seconds it feels different from what he experiences during working a job. This isn’t the world rushing towards an unidentifiable end, this is the world shifting out of focus and slowing down for one near imperceptible moment.

 

|||

 

Walking into the conference room at E Company HQ for their mission debriefing is normal by now. There’s no hesitation in their steps, no more comparing the threshold to a ravine that needed to be crossed to get to the point of no return, to change their lives beyond reversibility.

Years later the memory of that first time - being escorted into the room, sweaty palms, swallowing nervously - is merely a footnote, a thought added in parentheses. They’ve made their choice over and over again, every second of every day with every breath and heartbeat. They’ve turned their backs on higher education, on living in the same neighbourhood without moving every so often, on introducing themselves with their real names and not having to fear ugly consequences.

They have the freedom to decline missions that aren’t suited for their skillset or where the risk outweighs the reward. Their choice. Doesn’t mean they’re giving up on the bigger picture, the job. That’s the one thing you can’t do, giving up the job. Either someone holding a grudge will find you, or your own people come for you because Command thinks you’re a loose end that needs to be cut off. Whichever happens first, in the end the only way you can leave is in a body bag. If you’re lucky and get one.

So choosing the job means choosing life, which really is just fine with George. It doesn’t speak in favour of his personality, he knows that, but he fucking loves the job and he fucking loves life.

He’s two steps from the open conference room door but turning his head to look at Joe over his shoulder nearly causes him to walk into the doorway. Joe laughs as he passes him by and George has no time to spare the threshold a second thought.

 

|||

 

George remembers going on a rollercoaster when he was a teenager. It doesn’t come close to the feeling of speeding along the dark highways with several million dollars in the secret compartment under the backseat and Joe’s fingers tapping along to the beat of the radio’s techno music.

He rolls down the window a few inches, feels the cool late September air messing up his hair and raising goosebumps on his skin. It doesn’t slow his thoughts, doesn’t dampen the grin on his lips that’s so wide it almost hurts.

The road in front of them is completely empty so he dares looking over at Joe.

“What d’you think we could do with that much money, huh?” A street sign is coming up and he squints at it. “I mean I know we gotta give it to HQ, but think about it. Maybe a nice vacation? A real nice date?” He huffs a laugh. “Buy a big house and do nothing but lie in the garden on a sunny day? Watch the dog grow up and read fairy tales to -”

“Stop,” Joe interrupts quietly. “Just stop.” His tone makes George shut up immediately. “You know that’s not an option for us.”

And the thing is, George does know, but it still feels like a slap to the face, a bucket of cold water dumped on you in your sleep.

The street sign announces New York City to be another 20 miles down the road. Almost home, George thinks, and feels hollow. There’s still a blood spatter on his jeans and the empty clip of his gun weighs heavier than it should. The music has turned into a dull thudding without real melody to it.

“When this, this entire thing, is over -” he tries, because that’s what he does, he always tries.

In his peripheral vision he catches Joe shaking his head, a short abrupt movement before he looks out the passenger window at something George can’t see.

“There is no good ending for people like us, George.”

It’s the exhaustion, the defeat, the fact that Joe isn’t even angry about what he has apparently accepted as fact that turns George’s insides to lead. Doesn’t matter that Joe’s right, doesn’t matter that he’s said it a dozen times, doesn’t matter that George should know it too.

He watches the lights of the buzzing city come into view and doesn’t tear his eyes away from what’s in front of them. He says what he always says and what always feels like a half-truth, like there could be more to it but it won’t come out of his mouth.

“If the ending sucks we should make the story before as good as we can.”

 

|||

 

The Luz family is a big one, a safety net of father, mother, several siblings, not to mention the abundance of more distant relatives.

George doesn’t know what story Command has fabricated and told his family about why he’s practically disappeared from the planet. He doesn’t have to care, main thing is that it had served the purpose of seamlessly cutting all ties to his old life, a necessity he hadn’t looked forward to but accepted nonetheless.

He’d never harboured some secret wish of one day having his own family, with a partner and kids and that white picket fence everyone seems to love so much. But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s still a family guy, used to always having a group of people around him that keeps him grounded and pulls him back. Leaving his familiar home for good had hurt and scared; he’d done it anyway.

(He collects fake identities the way Perconte collects watches, and he wears them with an ease and a naturalness that mirrors that of Nixon with his tailored perfectly fitting suits.

George knows who he is, but sometimes he’s afraid he won’t be able to take them off again, that they become a second skin and too much a part of him.

Preventing him from turning into a jigsaw puzzle of ghosts, that’s what the others do.)

He finds his new family in Bill’s curses, Skip’s jokes, Winters’ confidence. There are Lip’s warm smiles and cups of coffee, Liebgott’s sharp anger, and Buck’s incessant instigations to gamble.

He finds his new home in the soft expression Joe sometimes has when he looks at George. Finds it in shared cigarettes, a light shove after too much riling, and getting shut up by Joe’s lips on his.

(Sometimes George watches Joe from the other side from the room, catches his gaze and maybe he’ll wink and Joe will roll his eyes and smile that little smile. Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night with Joe’s arm heavy around his waist and the sound of calm breathing close to his ear.

Time will turn into grains of sands that run through George’s fingers and he has no idea how to grip tighter and hold on without losing even more. It’s living on borrowed time, and it makes him want to empty the magazine of his gun into the nearest wall.)

He wouldn’t trade this life for anything in the world. But there are times where he wonders if he’s really given up on the idea of watching his hair become gray, his body weaker, his mind calmer.

(He wonders if Joe will need reading glasses, and he knows he’s fucked.)

  


|||

 

Working on a mission together isn’t the norm, but when they do it means that George has a front row seat to anything that goes wrong.

The string of curses Joe spits out turns George’s blood to ice and he looks up to see Joe holding his arm close to his body.

He must know, maybe even feel, the spark of panic that rushes through George, because he looks up to find George’s gaze and tells him it’s not that bad, just a graze, he’ll live, it’s okay.

The smile he gives is probably supposed to be reassuring, but his teeth are bloodstained and George has never seen something as beautifully fucked up as this and it makes him irrationally angry because nothing about this is right, this feels like the world spinning too fast to stay on its own axis and he’s completely unequipped to handle this.

 

|||

 

The first time Joe kisses him they’re sitting on the roof of the tall HQ building with a chilly February breeze creeping through the fabric of their clothes. The night sky is pitch black, stars obscured by smog and the bright lights of the never sleeping city.

Wrap up of the last mission was over a week ago and Joe can’t blame the soft press of lips on adrenaline, booze, or sleep deprivation. George can’t blame his eager response on pretending to be someone else, on the thrill of the unknown, or on intoxication.

There’s Joe’s hand, knuckles still bruised, finding the front of George’s jacket to pull him even closer, and a discarded cigarette, not even half smoked, ember still burning on the ground.

George has never felt more like himself than he does in this moment. The sounds of the city are washed away by his own heartbeat steady in his ears, and all he feels is his own skin tingling pleasantly and fitting better than any high-price tailored suit ever could.

They had shared the cigarette, now they share the taste of smoke.

When Joe moves away he makes that disbelieving noise that, with the bright gleam in his eyes and tentative smile, might actually be a laugh. George has to lean only a tiny bit forward until their foreheads touch, his eyes never leaving Joe’s, a laugh forming in his chest and bubbling up.

This is what living feels like, he thinks. He wants it to never end.

 

|||

 

He’s seen Joe pull the trigger on someone more than once. Has seen him beating someone bloody with or without brass knuckles, has seen him weigh the life of someone else in his hand and finding it not heavy enough to be worth sparing.

Joe has watched him as he put on another person’s suit, switched his own personality for someone else’s, all while George’s own hands underneath the disguise become bloodier and bloodier.

It’s what they do, what they’ve chosen to become. Pawns in someone else’s fucked up game of chess, bullets in a gun that spits them out by the dozens and won’t hesitate to leave them behind should they no longer serve the purpose. And fuck, they love it.

But the thing is - and sometimes George is downright floored by the realization that it truly happened - that he could’ve never expected to join a crime organization and find fucking love. (Not that he uses that particular word.) How was he supposed to be prepared for Joe Toye, bleeding gash on his cheek and torn sleeves, yanking him close by the front of his shirt and telling him to get him a drink “and maybe a fucking band-aid or something”? How was he supposed to foresee Joe laughing at his jokes, accept his quiet company, punch him in the shoulder when he was too annoying?

Their profession forces George to think quick on his feet, to adapt and react to unpredicted turns of events in the matter of seconds. It carries over into his private life because not having his job affect everything else in his life is a luxury he gave up when he walked over that conference room threshold.

And yet here’s Joe, next to him in bed with the light from the streets casting soft shadows on a relaxed face in peaceful sleep, and it still catches George by surprise how, for someone who should be a cold-hearted criminal, he’s blessed with so much love and happiness.

 

|||

 

He’s on a job with another team and everything’s going according to plan until it all goes to shit and they have to leave the body of one of their younger recruits behind while they try to save their skin.

No one is following them but Bill drives as fast as he can through the flashing city streets. The sun is only just setting and, because it’s October and because of course does the universe thinks its irony to be hilarious, it begins to rain.

Then again, the patter of rain and the sound of the windscreen wipers is better than the silence, coming from the smouldering anger that seems to have sucked the oxygen out of the air.

George feels that anger slowly turning into the exhaustion he knows comes from accepting the fact that there’s nothing you can do but resign yourself to your current situation, even though it sucks. He’s been down this road a couple times already, and normally it wouldn’t affect him this much, he barely knew the kid, unlike the other guys with him. So it’s everyone else’s reaction that rubs off on him, has him wishing to go back and tear those assholes that were supposed to make business with them apart, or at least collect the body for a proper burial.

When he turns around to check that there isn’t suddenly a suspicious car behind them, he catches Roe stealing a glance at Heffron. They’re pressed together on the backseat, with Heffron in the middle, flanked by Roe on one side and Spina on the other. Roe still has the dead kid’s blood on his hands from his futile attempt to stop the bleeding and he looks so much older than his 25 years that George’s heart hurts for him.

He notices the way Roe presses his leg against Heffron’s, whose occasional sniffle tells them just how hard the incident has shaken him. Roe’s eyes scream helplessness and apologies that Heffron can’t see but would find unnecessary anyways.

What George wishes he’d miss is the tiny hint of gratefulness, that thought of “at least it wasn’t him” that he knows will tear Roe up with guilt for at least a couple days.

George thinks of Joe, safe and sound in their apartment, and understands.

 

|||

 

One time they get a mission in Europe; first Paris, then Amsterdam. They work well together as a team and finish the job in less time than planned, which is why Winters tells them they can take a few more days to stay in the city, as long as they keep their heads low. Either that or he’s just feeling generous because he knows they would’ve never made it to this continent without the job and they deserve to experience the beauty of the city without the restraints of Command.

It’s just two days but they make them count. They can almost pretend that they’re normal tourists, wearing sunglasses and base caps because the sun’s too bright and paying everything in cash because they don’t want to fly home with unspent Euros in their wallets.

They eat ice cream on a bench that overlooks the canal in one of the quieter areas. They stroll along the busy streets and take the time to watch and listen to the street artists. George buys two apples from the market and Joe takes a photo of him when the sticky apple juice makes his lips shiny and dribbles down his chin.

“You’re disgusting,” Joe says, laughing as he pockets his phone again.

George doesn’t even bother to swallow before replying, only wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and points to the phone while grinning. “And yet it’s obviously the way you want to remember me.”

 

|||

 

It’s the end of November and they pull off one of their largest coups in Detroit and they don’t even feel the ice cold rain as they make their way through the dark side alleys to the rendezvous point where they’re supposed to meet the others. The sound of cars honking and tires screeching is far off and George feels like he’s wading through water, like everything around them has blurred together into one big mass.

He’s out of breath, can barely keep up with Joe’s fast pace, but then he doesn’t have to anymore because Joe’s spinning around and gripping him by the lapels of his jacket. His back collides with the cold hard brick wall and he doesn’t have time to consciously register the dampness seeping through his clothes because he sees his wild grin reflected in Joe’s dilated pupils.

It all comes crashing down around him, the lingering smell of gunpowder, his own heartbeat drumming in his ear, the slide of skin slippery with rain and the remainders of blood, Joe’s breathless laughter before he presses their mouths together in the least graceful kiss they’ve ever had. It all mixes with the adrenaline and courses through George’s veins in a rush that makes him feel high and close to bursting out of his skin.

Everything else falls away until there’s nothing left, nothing matters anymore, but them in this dark abandoned alley, high on being alive.

 

|||

 

When it comes to injuries, George has had an inexplicable lucky streak for his entire life. He broke his arm when he was eleven and thought mouthing off at one of the biggest assholes in school, who also happened to be one of the tallest and best-built football players, was a good idea. But that didn’t leave a scar or another permanent reminder. (He likes to think he’s learned from the experience, but he really hasn’t.) The only things he gets are a few scratches or bruises, nothing that won’t heal in a matter of days.

Joe is the complete opposite and sometimes George doesn’t know how to feel about the scars, some years old and fully healed, others still red and drawing immediate attention if you aren’t used to seeing them. Mostly they make him feel relieved that there’s still a living body underneath that marked skin (and Joe gets to feel his gratitude every time). And he likes how they write Joe’s story so plainly on his body, for George to read in private moments. He likes the physical reminder that neither of them is a blank page, and he likes that some of those stories were written by both of them.

 

|||

 

If he finds getting new recruits so close before Christmas weird, he doesn’t say a thing. Besides, making it Heffron’s, Perconte’s, and his personal mission to haze them comes pretty close to a present.

The two boys - they can’t be much older than twenty - are from the West Coast, never been anywhere else, and George takes a perverse joy in feeding them lies by the spoonful and have them demand for more. Must be nice to still believe the world’s yours to take, that they will have a bright and glorious future if only they do as Command tells them and the rest of the guys train them in everything they have to know.

He nearly laughs in their faces when they believe his story about how there’s still a chance for them to one day leave the city and settle down in some remote place far away from the States and spend the rest of their lives living off the money they made through thievery, lies, and murder.

They excitedly leave him in the office area to get to Speirs’ shooting practice. Shaking his head amusedly, George wonders if he’s ever been that naive.

(Joe throws a ball of paper at his head and George knows the answer is right there in the grin on his face as he looks for something he can use in revenge: he still is that naive.)

 

|||

 

Later, he remembers it only in flashes. The unexpected explosion that had left him half-deaf and disoriented. The smell of gasoline, of burning plastic, metal, and flesh.

He remembers seeing Joe lying on the ground, a trail of blood on the asphalt, and one missing limb. Then, Lip’s hand on his shoulder while he’s frozen in shock, unable to step closer to help or hear Joe moaning in agony. Roe’s frantic but sure, capable hands trying to take care of the worst so they can bring Joe to a hospital.

Command condemns hospitalization as a last resort because the prize for buying a doctor’s silence is high and without guarantee. On the explosion site no one hesitates when Roe tells them to get Toye in one of the cars and to the nearest clinic.

George doesn’t know what happened after that, the next thing he remembers is walking past Bill who’d taken the first guard shift in front of Joe’s room.

There are white sheets, white walls, pale skin, beeping, the sharp biting scent of antiseptic.

It’s the beeping George tries to focus on, the heartline on the monitor and its continuous up and down, like the rise and fall of a chest. He tries not to think about how bad Joe looks, with his eyes closed and hooked up to machines and just too fucking calm and pale and -

Shoes squeaking on the gray floor, George walks to the plastic chair next to the hospital bed. His suspicion that it’s as uncomfortable as it looks proves to be right, but he’s had worse and, in all likeliness, he’s going to spend many hours in this thing so he better get used to it right away. It’s better than a church pew at a funeral, except that’s not what they get in this line of business. And fuck, why is he even thinking about that?

He leans forward, rests his arms cautiously on the sheets to look at Joe’s unconscious face. He knows what those eyes look like during a kill, after a training session with Bill, when they meet his across their kitchen table. He knows what those lips taste like after being wrapped around a cigarette, and what they feel like when they’re both smiling just a bit too hard. Or when neither of them says the three words, but they’re both feeling them crackling in the air around them.

Carefully, George takes Joe’s hand in his, presses his dry lips to the scarred knuckles.

“This isn’t the end of the story, Joe,” he says, quietly. And then, barely a whisper, “we deserve a good end.”

He prays that he’s right.

 

|||

 

(They know who they are and what they are and the future is always just a new blank page.)

**Author's Note:**

> title from lana del rey's song "born to die" because go big or go home right
> 
> thanks to kelly for being a wonderful enabler and for looking this over (all mistakes are mine and mine alone tho)


End file.
